Hacking What exactly does Atmosphere offer (if anything) over SX OS now?

[Lunatics]

As the title says, I am looking for a serious discussion about what one solution offers over another in 2020.

I will say it right now, I do not care about people's political agendas against SX OS or claiming something that gives them access to Homebrew or free games "isn't worth money" as it is such a ridiculous statement.

That being said I am looking for serious discussion about what one offers over the other. When searching and googling comparisons, a lot of things reference Atmos having access to kips etc which as far as I am aware it supports now, or at least certain ones for themes etc.

So essentially what specific benefits does Atmos really provide? Aside from a few Homebrew apps in which the developers specifically break it from working on sx os because of their bs issues with it, does Atmosphere even offer any unique features that don't just work in sx os now?

I've thought about switching because of all of the negativity against one cfw and people specifically making their apps not work with it, but why go through the hassle to change off of something that works great and so easily for no benefit?

 

[EmanueleBGN]

Atmosphère is free

 

[RiPPERD]

There is an old expression... IF IT AINT BROKE... DONT FIX IT!

basically whatever your using... if it is working then dont bother trying to change it. Im sure some sort of CFW will come out at some point, make the change then

 

[lolz5521]

Atmosphère is free

nuff said lol.

 

[Lunatics]

There is an old expression... IF IT AINT BROKE... DONT FIX IT!

basically whatever your using... if it is working then dont bother trying to change it. Im sure some sort of CFW will come out at some point, make the change then

This has generally been my consensus but I am curious as to what I might potentially be missing out on, if anything. In the past it was themes and kips but those seem to work now and I am trying to find out if there are any specific features that are actually missing on sx os now.

I had read about cheat overlays with edizon but it sounds like edizon may or may not work with sx os and is not actually supported.

 

[catlover007]

So essentially what specific benefits does Atmos really provide? Aside from a few Homebrew apps in which the developers specifically break it from working on sx os because of their bs issues with it, does Atmosphere even offer any unique features that don't just work in sx os now?

You're completely misrepresenting the issue here. From the cases I know it's not the developers fault if Team Xecuter messes OS internals up. That's entirely a technical issue on their part, but the fact that SX OS is entirely dependent on Atmosphere makes this even more glaring.

 

[Brawl345]

SX OS is Atmosphère, but old and duck-taped together so it easily breaks and you can't report bugs. That's one of the main reason developers block it - because why would they support an old and broken AMS version? There are long-standing bugs in the code that are still not fixed (I recall there was something with the cheat engine) and everytime TX has to rebase this mess on the latest version of Atmosphère.
I used SX OS on release date till half a year ago and seeing random crashes was very annoying because they were almost immediately fixed in Atmosphère. My main reason for switching was system modules though - I really like using sys-screenuploader and sys-clk and the upcoming EdiZon 4.0 will make cheating even easier and better. The only thing SX OS has over AMS is USB loading.
Save redirection to the SD card is also useful if you don't want to create a second profile but want to play a game again

If you switch now, you also won't be left behind in the future. Trust me, it happened before on the 3DS and it will happen again. There will be a point in time (not now, maybe in 1-2 years?) where SX OS won't get any updates and then you are stuck and waiting.

 

[JayMathis]

This may not matter to those who aren't fans of Dreamcast but the Retroarch emulator Flycast only works in Atmosphere. It's very important to me. That's why I switch back and forth between SXOS and Atmosphere because I need SXOS to play games off external hdd.

 

[Dust2dust]

You're completely misrepresenting the issue here. From the cases I know it's not the developers fault if Team Xecuter messes OS internals up. That's entirely a technical issue on their part, but the fact that SX OS is entirely dependent on Atmosphere makes this even more glaring.

But wasn't Awoo Installer broken on purpose on SXOS? Blawar released a slightly modified version that works on SXOS, so it's definitely contempt towards SXOS that pushed the original author to release his "Anti SXOS DRM" version.

 

[catlover007]

But wasn't Awoo Installer broken on purpose on SXOS? Blawar released a slightly modified version that works on SXOS, so it's definitely contempt towards SXOS that pushed the original author to release his "Anti SXOS DRM" version.

even if that's the case, e.g. Flycast it legitimately broken because of Xecutors incompetence

 

[RHOPKINS13]

Much of SX OS is stolen Atmosphere code. Atmosphere is open source, so you're free to look at and edit the code yourself. Most of us aren't devs like that though, but it helps knowing that the code is accessible to the whole community and if somebody tried to add something malicious, like brick code, to Atmosphere, we'd all know about it.

Atmosphere allows for custom kip modules to be loaded, which allows for all sorts of cool stuff. You can add background music to the home menu, have a FTP server running in the background, use overlay menus in games to manage your cheats, use third-party controllers without third party adapters. It's pretty cool. And generally Atmosphere has better compatibility with custom themes.

Only things SX OS has over Atmosphere right now are XCI Loading and USB support. And with the right setup I believe you can install games from a USB hard drive on Atmosphere, but you can't run them them directly from the drive like SX OS can.

This "SX OS vs Atmosphere" argument is seen time and time again on these forums, there needs to just be one stickied thread on it where people can argue their heads off, because I'm tired of repeatedly hearing the same arguments. I tend to side with the Atmosphere crowd, but I understand where the SX OS fans are coming from.

Atmosphere is great if you want CFW for free, or if you like more customization, and like being able to tinker with things.

SX OS is great if you don't mind paying $35-50 for a simple, almost done-for-you solution, with XCI and USB support, and you don't care about stolen code.

Some people argue that it doesn't make sense to care about stolen code when talking about a product that's made for piracy. The counter-argument is that Atmosphere is made primarily for enabling homebrew, not piracy. But then again, we all know what it's commonly used for.

Use whatever you feel most comfortable with.

 

[masagrator]

> More advanced cheat engine (making automatic switching values cheat based on heaps is impossible in SX OS)
> No support for external cheat engine solution
> More space for sysmodules, which results in supporting more advanced stuff like overlays
> Open Source code, which can help in understanding why your homebrew conflicts with CFW (that's why I don't help SX OS users with SaltyNX)
> Atmosphere supports ALL FWs, when SX OS doesn't care about compability with older FWs in new updates
> Crash dumps, which means better technical support
> Support for layeredfs HTML documentations
> Free
> Bugs are fixed really fast

Things that come to my mind.

 

[Lunatics]

So I guess sys modules are really the remaining things aside from one off Homebrews like that Dreamcast emulator that may be broken (excluding things intentionally broken) however I thought there were ways to get sys modules working on sx os now but I could be wrong.

As long as sx os is supported I don't see much of a reason to go through the hassle of trying to move off of it as it does not seem like you are missing out on a lot of significant features anymore. I guess sys modules could be interesting but I'll have to look into what they entail and if it's worth the change, then the next issue is figuring out how to retain everything existing I have. I know I would also get annoyed booting into sx Everytime to load hekate to boot Atmos. Just seems like there's a lot more involved.